October 03, 2008
Friday Poem
///
The Garden
Ezra Pound
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
...................................................
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
...................................................
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like someone to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
///
Posted by Jim Culleny at 07:16 AM | Permalink
Comments
Many thanks for that, Jim. Amazing...
Posted by: PD Smith | Oct 3, 2008 8:39:33 AM
Yeah, I've seen her around too...
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Oct 3, 2008 8:53:38 AM
Thanks from me as well Jim. One of my faves.
Posted by: Jesse | Oct 3, 2008 8:59:45 AM
Wow. I knew Pound was a snob, but this is over the top. Count me among the rabble. Where is the world I was supposed to inherit? Trashed by rich bastards.
Posted by: Jared | Oct 3, 2008 11:50:57 AM
An image of Diana came to mind as I read the poem. Was Pound channeling the future?
Posted by: Boretide | Oct 3, 2008 1:01:37 PM
thanks.
Posted by: maniza | Oct 3, 2008 7:02:37 PM
Yea, along with Eliot, Pound was a anti semite. Both founded the "New Criticism:" that is when Pound was not supporting Mussolini and Italian Fascism.
Both were Ok poets, although Eliot was a Victorian provincial snob. At least Pound had a more interesting social circle.
Let's face it, a Howl writer he was not---
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 3, 2008 10:54:03 PM
T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets is nevertheless profound.
And the Howl writer went to visit Pound at the end of his life for a poet-to-poet chat.
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Oct 3, 2008 11:50:27 PM
Pound was an anti-Semite and Fascist? Holy shit! That poem is just dreadful now.
Posted by: Jesse | Oct 4, 2008 5:36:24 AM
I heard a bit of advice once that I found fits many situations, but is specific to this poem and Pound's anti-Semitism.
"Trust the poem, not the poet," it says.
Posted by: Jim | Oct 4, 2008 7:28:10 AM
It's very nice when our artists are decent people, like Auden for example. But it was he who once said about Wagner (I don't have the direct quote at my disposal unfortunately)something like: as a man he was a perfect shit, but he may have been the greatest artist whoever lived.
Posted by: Jesse | Oct 4, 2008 8:32:25 AM
People who are looking can find some unsettling things Auden said about the French (that they are "hardly white"), and some Mid-century muddle-headed romanticizing of Icelandic people's Nordic aspect. For all his marvelous qualities and gifts of friendship, Auden was no stranger to racialist thinking. He just didn't have the nasty and difficult personality that, we observe, goes along with it -- or should. I would like people to consider the birth years of Auden, Eliot, Pound -- to be free of racialist thinking, even to have sought freedom from it, they would have almost had to have been among the visionaries of their era. Not reading Pound and Eliot because of their demonstrable anti-Semitism is akin to shunning all 19th century American literature not written by Abolitionists.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 4, 2008 10:06:35 AM
Elatia-
One must be intellectually honest-- Pound and Eliot had raciest and conservative agendas beyond the conditions of the times, and provided platforms and voices supporting fascism and political ideology that had great harm.
It is not that I don't enjoy their poetry (I had one of Eliot's lines up on my wall for years), and if one puts anything in a small enough box it is tolerable, but the world is seamless, and these were despicable men.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 4, 2008 10:34:53 AM
"And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor."
You don't have to read much between the lines here to see that Pound would love to kill off the poor if he had the chance. It is the poem itself which is offensively violent, not just the poet.
Posted by: Jared | Oct 4, 2008 10:45:11 AM
As I suggested, trust the poem, not the poet.
The poem just can't help being honest. In it we're warned what this man thinks, and what some others probably think. The poem is not any more dispicable than any other dispicable truth.
So alerted by the poem (if not the poet)we can go about in the world a little more armed against the worst in us.
Posted by: Jim | Oct 4, 2008 11:23:39 AM
That's why we should be very cautious when considering biographical information as *enriching* a reading of Art; since real Art trades in ambiguities, "knowing" Pound as a "snob" or Jew-hater or all-around nasty ruins any chance of reading irony in this poem.
I'd certainly read the poem to mean that the Kiera Knightley type in the lead role is a villainess. Not that I treasure this poem: it's a bit wordy, no? Remove the first "like"; the extraneous "and she is" from the third line, which resolves to a dud fourth by overstating ("emotional anemia") the poem's case. Much prefer his famous metro/petals pome, or the pretentious "translations" he became known for.
Meanwhile, no less an authority than Kurt Vonnegut reports that Jack Kerouac once referred to a dark-skinned writer in his presence as a "blue-gummed nigger"... hope I didn't just spoil "On the Road" for you!
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Oct 4, 2008 11:46:37 AM
"Pound and Eliot had raciest... agendas"
Oooh, I love a poet with a racy agenda! Particularly if his racy agenda involves my participation!
Doubt whether Pound and I would have hooked up though, what with me being so filthy and sturdy.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 4, 2008 1:54:38 PM
Elatia,
Trashing the French is every Brit's birthright and vice versa, so it flows back and forth like a Dover ferry. But this "Nordic aspect" is a little intriguing, as far as I know he never went in for the biologism, and didn't really start shedding his Marxian internationalist leanings until America and his prodigal return to Christianity. Maybe its time for me to re-read his bio, it's been awhile.
Posted by: Jesse | Oct 4, 2008 5:24:34 PM
"And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor."
Until Margaret Sanger came along with her better idea. The triumph over this line is Planned Parenthood in all its satanic splendor. Doubtless Ezra had her full support.
Posted by: Carlos | Oct 4, 2008 7:17:00 PM
Jesse, read _Letters from Iceland_ -- part travel writing, part poetry -- a 1937 project of Auden and Louis MacNeice, and fave reading of Pedro Almodovar, apparently. It's perfectly true the French and the English go at each other, but when you add in a love of Austria, a residence in Kirchstetten, and the impulse to posit Icelandic heritage, you are getting some Mid-century pathology. Please understand, these are not the reasons to read a great poet, and they are not the reasons not to.
Dave, if we were as intellectually honest as you are suggesting, we'd have to detach somewhat from Newton because of his Rosicrucian nonsense and probable life-long virginity. Yes, yes -- social thought and personal inhibitions inform poetry more readily than they do math, but no one real is without a night side. We all think and do some things which should disqualify us from wide admiration. That's why the sweetest words are: I know, and I love you anyway.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 4, 2008 10:34:22 PM
Elatia-
We are not talking about a Jung right here--
We are speaking of a aggressive fascist and anti Semitic stance, with a forum to furthering these ideas and policies.
Not to be unkind, but this is relativism at it's best, where all becomes a bland pabulum.
I'm not into pabulum.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 4, 2008 11:03:07 PM
Carlos,
Please don't demonize Margaret Sanger. If fanatic Anthony Comstock and the Comstock Act (passed by an all-male Congress) hadn't effectively denied birth control information and devices to people seeking them and in desperate need of them, Margaret Sanger would not have even had a mission. She was part of a eugenicist era permeated by Social Darwinism, and she didn't get support from eugenicists until others, like many of the suffragists, refused to support her birth control efforts.
If you want to bring Satan into it, look at Anthony Comstock, who rejoiced when birth control pioneers were so persecuted by fanaticism enacted into law that they committed suicide. Comstock rejoiced over their deaths.
A bit far a field from Pound's poetry, but if you're going to start demonizing people throughout history, it's important to see their lives in historical context.
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Oct 5, 2008 4:22:56 PM
These comments are coming from Carlos, who is a devotional catholic (at least from his posts, I'm making this assumption)
Religious people must suspend critical thinking , or their world can't work
---From Meyers blog
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Oct 5, 2008 11:42:21 PM
It's nice to hear from someone with some knowledge of the subject. Can you tell me if you consider Sanger to be a Eugenicist, and whether or not she believed that poor people were poor because they were inferior, and should be denied the right to breed because of that genetic inferiority? I would also appreciate legitimate sources for your information.
Since we have a legacy attributed to Sanger in this country where the racial communities targeted by Sanger have staggeringly higher levels of voluntary sterilization do you think that would be deemed a success story by Margaret? Do feel the continuation of the targeting of minorities by Planned Parenthood's marketing efforts is to the betterment of those communities?
If you feel I speak from ignorance, please don't brush me off, I'd really like your point of view clarified, since I've honestly never run across anyone who would stand in support of Margaret Sanger.
Posted by: Carlos | Oct 6, 2008 6:00:19 AM
Carlos,
Here are some sources where you can find out more about Sanger's work and the opposition she faced:
nyu
nyu
interfarfacing
I see no point in speculating on the questions you posed, although the NYU sources say she was not a eugenicist. I do know that Sanger opposed Comstock and his ban of essential health care information that could have saved women's lives. Of course, his puritanical zeal also resulted in book banning and suppression of free speech beyond the realm of reproductive freedom. I just read that the Comstock Act was not repealed until 1958. Free people don't need religious zealots as morality police concerning their own health decisions and choices in books or other media.
Involuntary sterilization in this country was all the rage for a time, and the first victims were not ethnic or racial minorities, but people deemed mentally ill and mentally retarded. But I think it is grossly unfair to attribute the eugenics trend in this country to Margaret Sanger. Give Oliver Wendell Holmes some credit, along with the so-called scientists and IQ testers and other self-appointed guardians of the human gene pool.
I read that recently a congressman in, I think, Louisiana proposed paying poor women a thousand dollars to undergo tubal ligation. His proposal was so unpopular that he immediately retracted it.
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Oct 6, 2008 9:17:50 PM
Dave,
I don't think it's accurate to make such generalizations about "religious people." There is blind faith and faith in things beyond human reason and rational dissection via analysis that nevertheless does not discard reason. I think the heroin analogy is silly.
There is religious -- or spiritual -- faith outside the confines of institutionalized church dogma. Not the place to examine hagiography, but think of great Catholics like St. Francis. Well, until he was deemed a heretic he was a Catholic.
I think a lot of the anti-religion sentiment is generated in opposition to religious right Christian fundamentalism and its equivalent in other religions. That is, literal-mindedness. But literal-mindedness and dogmatism are not limited to religion.
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Oct 6, 2008 9:29:52 PM
"SANGER: I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world--that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin -- that people can -- can commit..
"
Smoke 'em if you got 'em
Of course, since Sanger went after the poor, and minorities, and not those with inheritable diseases of any other kind you will forgive me for concluding that the "diseases" she aspired to eradicate were the aforementioned.
But I think it is grossly unfair to attribute the eugenics trend in this country to Margaret Sanger.
I don't think you give her enough credit, although you seem to infer that I claim she started the Eugenics trend. I don't. She may have been its fulfillment though. Many millions of million abortions later, & I don't know how many sterilizations (more millions?), among the minorities and poor she deemed "unfit," I don't know who could match her record. Well maybe Hitler, but it's a close race. She did it with "love" though. That should matter.
Here is a quote from Sanger from the NYU link you provided:
"Baby's rights' have been well formulated by my friend Marie Carmichael Stopes: They are:...
3) To be given a body untainted by a heritable disease, uncontaminated by any of the racial poisons.
If that's not a purely eugenic posture, I don't know what is, but we also have more of her writings that are somewhat less ambiguous: The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda, andBirth Control and Racial Betterment, both of which lay waste to any claim that she was not a Eugenicist.
I spent some time reading through the NYU site, and I thank you for the links. It appears, ironically, that although she was an advocate for forced sterilization, and an admirer of the Third Reich's Sterilization Courts, she also found abortion abhorrent, regardless of the medical risks at the time. Some cynics might claim that she was only horrified when the upper classes resorted to that method, but you can judge for yourself:
"Contraceptive knowledge will do more than anything else to lessen the shocking number of abortions. No one can give accurate statistics as to the number of abortions, as most of them are illegal and secret...It is well known that they are fearfully frequent among the rich...Mere preaching can not correct this appalling situation."
So yes. She was a eugenicist. And a racist as well, although hers was a broad brush not limited to merely Blacks and Jews. But if you wish to appreciate her works and ignore her nature, than I suppose that's where this thread got started, but like Jim said:
So alerted by the poem (if not the poet)we can go about in the world a little more armed against the worst in us.
Posted by: Carlos | Oct 7, 2008 12:29:01 AM
Sorry. Mere millions. and the broken link:
Birth Control and Racial Betterment
Posted by: Carlos | Oct 7, 2008 12:36:29 AM
Carlos,
More links to keep you busy:
nature
commondreams
haaretz
From Garland Allen's article:
"But Black does not, in fact, make much of whatever lessons we might learn, especially from his account. The problem with demonizing the older American eugenicists (many of whom thought they were taking the most modern, scientific and progressive approach to social problems) is that we distance ourselves from them and so can easily fall prey to our own biases today. For all his journalistic pursuit of a righteous cause, Black's conclusions about the present are remarkably tame. He discusses all of the problems that have emerged in recent years that are associated with new genetic technologies: gene therapy, designer babies, sex selection, cloning and so on. By and large, he seems to see geneticists today working for the benefit of all mankind, as opposed to following narrow eugenical interests. But so were most geneticists in the 1920s, and that includes the perception of eugenicists about themselves. Black fails to note that many of the present claims for the genetic basis of social behaviours are no better supported than their counterparts in the past. Yet the widespread belief that such traits are biologically inherited, as frequently sensationalized in the popular press, could easily fall prey to fascist and other demagogical manipulations as we face and debate highly sensitive issues such as health care, the widespread use of behaviour-controlling drugs, and screening for 'violence' and 'criminal' genes. By having made it seem as though Germany imported its eugenics and scientific rationale for genocide, Black's book could easily lead a modern reader to miss the nascent eugenical developments that are occurring within our own society today."
You may enjoy singling out Margaret Sanger for opprobrium, but you're ignoring the medicine and scientific theories of the times, including our time. I am not defending any policies that led to sterilization of poor people. However, I am defending her courage as a birth control pioneer fighting fanatics like Anthony Comstock and "others" who would outlaw birth control, i.e., make contraceptives illegal, favor criminalized abortion or, today, insist that abstinence only is a practical or "moral" approach to human sexuality before marriage. I consider such approaches to being human profoundly inhumane and anti-human race. Did you ever consider that Sanger may have focused her efforts on poor communities (gone after them, as you put it) because of her early experiences as a nurse working with women who were poor, had large families, no access to birth control and were sometimes dying from unsafe abortions or in childbirth?
I don't know how this conversation developed from an Ezra Pound poem. Maybe we should discuss his incarceration in St. Elizabeth's as an alternative to being tried for treason. Or perhaps his good fortune in emerging from St. Elizabeth's without having been castrated.
In any case, I think it's absurd to compare Margaret Sanger to Adolph Hitler.
Posted by: CriticalMassI | Oct 7, 2008 2:12:04 AM
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